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My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is an animated television series produced by Hasbro as part of the My Little Pony toy franchise, which is tied in with the 2010 relaunch of dolls and play sets and original programming for U.S. cable channel Discovery Family (formerly Hub Network). Lauren Faust was selected as the creative developer and executive producer for the show based on her previous animation experience with shows like The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Under Hasbro's guidance Faust developed the show to appeal to the target demographic of young girls, but created characters and settings that challenged formerly stereotypical norms of "girly" images and added adventure and humorous elements in order to keep parents interested. Fan activites Online Websites such as Equestria Daily and Ponychan were created for fans to share artwork, stories, music, and news about the show. Founded in January 2011, Equestria Daily had over 36 million pageviews in its first 9 months, and has since surpassed 500 million views (June 2014). The blog, which receives more than 175,000 visits a day and is fully funded by advertising revenue, was established by 23-year-old college student Shaun Scotellaro for the purpose of collecting fan fiction and news specific to Friendship Is Magic. Shaun eventually cut back on his community college classes in order to continue running the site out of his parents' house in Glendale, Arizona, when it grew in popularity. He believed the show needed a unified fan base at the time, as there existed an overarching concern that Hasbro would not be authorizing a second season.6 In September 2017, selected archives of Equestria Daily were included in the Library of Congress's "Web Cultures Web Archive Collection" by the American Folklife Center; the collection was established to "documenting the creation and sharing of emergent cultural traditions on the web". Arts and entertainment Many artists use sites such as deviantArt to display fan art based on existing and fan-created characters; more than 500,000 pieces of Friendship Is Magic artwork were present on deviantArt by June 2012. Adult fans have also created a number of plush toys and other figures based on the show's and fandom-created characters, which they sell on eBay and other auction sites to other fans, sometimes for over 100 US dollars.49 Videos that incorporate footage from the show, including music videos, parodies and remakes of movie and video game trailers, are posted regularly on YouTube. One early video that caught media attention was made by high school student Stephen Thomas, using science to dissect some of the physical impossibilities on My Little Pony as part of a class presentation; it was later featured on the Tosh.0 website. Remixed versions of professional works using Friendship Is Magic footage have been noticed by their creators; filmmaker Edgar Wright noted My Little Pony versions of the trailers for his films Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Hot Fuzz. Top Gear's UK blog team and the UK edition of the Top Gear magazine noted a video using clips of their show featuring pony characters. A fan-made Friendship Is Magic version of South Korean rapper Psy's "Gangnam Style" music video incorporating an "invisible horse dance" has been highlighted by media outlets as one of the top takes on the video. One fan, Zachary Rich, created a full-length Flash-based fan episode, "Double Rainboom", as part of his college coursework at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Pony-based videos of "Weird Al" Yankovic's songs that Yankovic had highlighted in his Twitter feed led to discussions between the musician and the show directors, and eventually a guest appearance in the show in the fourth season episode "Pinkie Pride". The fan community has produced numerous fan fiction works, one of the longest being "Fallout: Equestria" written by "Kkat" based on the Fallout video game series. Some fans have created video games based on Friendship Is Magic, such as the fighting game My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic, modifications of existing games like Team Fortress 2 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, or crossover artwork between the animated show and video game settings. Flash-based applications allow fans to create their own pony characters in the artistic style of the show. The fandom has been noted for the quantity and diversity of music produced by its members, including cover versions of songs from the show and original songs inspired by the show and its fandom. In January 2014, BronyTunes (an iOS and web app) was released that collected over 7,000 songs and remixes inspired by the show. "Everfree Network", a brony media network, compiled more than 4,800 pieces of fan music by over 500 different musicians in late December 2011. Thiessen commented that many of these fan productions approach the quality of his studio's work, and suggested the possibility of crowd-sourcing some aspects of future production, while the show's composer, Daniel Ingram, often features fan-made songs on his personal webspace. A group of fan musicians compiled a charity album of original songs, entitled Smile, which raised over $21,000 within a month for the Children's Cancer Association. fandom, My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Category:2010s in American television Category:2010s in Canadian television Category:Subcultures Category:Television fandom Category:Animation fandom